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I'm trying to get my 7 year old daughter involved in the process of choosing where we go for her first backpacking trip. So I'm looking for highlight pics and videos that other dads may have captured.
I've narrowed the choices I plan to share with her to Dinky Lakes, Camp/ Bear Lake, and Roosevelt/ Lane Lakes.
If anyone has resources they can share, please do!
Happy Holidays
Sam
"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
- Jackie Robinson
The primary arbiter of "low mosquito" is time of year. September onward, in the destinations mentioned will usually not have much in the way of mosquito harassment. June-July may be the worst for those destinations and August may be better. Outside of the general time-of-year, the level of mosquito torment is temperature and wind dependent, so it will vary by the specific weather when you go. Warmer days and nights with minimal breeze are associated with the worst mosquito experiences whereas cooler days and nights and breeze can lead to mild mosquito situations even in the soggiest of destinations.
Another trick to reduce mosquito harassment is to camp on relatively high ground above bodies of water. The campsite choice is important because one commonly benefits from a breeze during the day around a lake but in the evenings and mornings things can be rather still and that will be when you're hanging out at your campsite. Higher above the lake one commonly still gets a bit of a breeze, plus the mosquitoes do tend to be more concentrated nearer to the lake. When I say high ground, this generally means much higher than is necessary to maintain the minimum (by rules) distance from the water and this may mean a mild inconvenience of having to haul water a bit further from the lake to your campsite. This mild inconvenience, however, not only reduces the mosquito harassment but it nearly always gets you more solitude in your campsite, given that the vast majority of folks will camp closer to the lakes.
I have visited all of the destinations on your list and, under the adverse conditions noted above, they can be quite buggy, whereas under the favorable wether conditions, and/or later season, they will not be.
A few notes on your destinations, because, I presume this post is sort of in parallel with your other one.
Camp-Bear. There is a lot of soggy ground around Bear on the inlet side as well as a lot of those little ponds in this area that can, depending on weather lead to the high level of mosquito torment that makes Emigrant Wilderness notorious. However, I think there are some potentially nice "high ground" campsite above the western shore of the lake. Camp is smaller and slopes steeply down to the shore along all of its flanks, but there is the potential for "high ground" campsites near (best above, I think) the trail that runs above the southern shore.
Roosevelt and Lane tend to be thronged with people and there aren't any real hideaways to get far away from the crowds. There are some high ground camping options where the climbs well above the west shore of Lane. However, in contrast, Poore sees vastly fewer people and because of its size and openness, nearly always has a good breeze blowing that keeps the bugs away. A caveat is that the split to Poore (from the trail to Secret) is not marked and can be easily missed (missed this split myself in each of the last two years--2022 and 2023).
For the Dinkey Lakes note that the two closest lakes to the trailhead, First Dinkey and Mystery are flanked by a lot of wet and swampy ground so they can get pretty buggy. I think there are some creative "high ground" options above Mystery, however, that can reduce the bug issues as well as providing a secluded camping spot.
Note that the other entrance to Dinkey Lakes, which is off the Courtwright Reservoir side, takes you first to Cliff Lake, and that has less swampland than the side Giantbrookie has mentioned. And if you want more peace and quiet, the lake just southeast of Cliff Lake, not named in many topo maps, is rarely visited and quite beautiful.
